miércoles, agosto 08, 2012

Esto escribió Christopher Hitchens sobre Larkin y sobre Hull

"It is inescapable that we should wonder how and
why poetry manages to transmute the dross of existence into magic or gold, and
the contrast in Larkin’s case is a specially acute one. Having quit Belfast, he
removed himself forever to Hull, a rugged coastal city facing toward
Scandinavia that, even if it was once represented in Parliament by Andrew
Marvell, in point of warmth and amenity runs Belfast a pretty close second.
Here he brooded biliously and even spitefully on his lack of privacy, the success
of his happier friends Amis and Conquest, the decline of standards at the
university he served, the general bloodiness of pub lunches and academ­ic
sherry parties, the frumpy manipulativeness of women­folk, and the petrifying
imminence of death. (Might one say that Hull was other people?) He may have
taken a sidelong swipe at the daffodils, but he did evolve his own sour strain
and syncopation of Words­worth’s “still, sad music of humanity.” And without
that synthesis of gloom and angst, we could never have had his “Aubade,” a
waking meditation on extinction that unstrenuously contrives a tense, brilliant
counter­poise between the stoic philosophies of Lucretius and David Hume, and
his own frank terror of oblivion."Lo publicó en The Atlantic (¿dónde más?) en mayo de 2011. Las bastardillas son mías. Aquí el link completo: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/05/philip-larkin-the-impossible-man/8439/?single_page=true